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How we booked a one-way flight to Paris for less than $12

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One reason many people don’t travel overseas is because it can be expensive. Learn to overcome this obstacle and travel the world with resourcefulness.

Several years ago, I was a broke college student and broke people are amazingly creative. Instead of not traveling, I took what I had, good credit, and learned how to turn it into something I could use, miles and points for travel.

HOW TO BOOK A FLIGHT TO PARIS FOR LESS THAN A CUP OF COFFEE

Once I figured out how to travel for cheap, I used my travel hacking skills to travel the world with my husband and had some pretty awesome solo adventures too. To-date, we have successfully travel hacked our way to Europe, Asia, Australia, and Central America.

The most recent travel hacking success was booking a one-way flight to Paris for our entire family of three for less than $15.

How did we do it?

I’m glad you asked.

HOW TO TRAVEL WITH MILES AND CREDIT CARD REWARDS

1. BELIEVE

I remember when I first took the idea of mileage travel to my husband(then bf) and explained how we could travel with miles for really low prices. Understandably, he was skeptical. In fact, he was the first in a line of many skeptics that I’ve had to convert.

You see, people don’t believe that it’s possible to book overseas flights, even with miles for less than hundreds of dollars. So, the first step to this process I’m sharing with you today is to believe that you can’t do this because you can!

2. LEARN

Learn how to work with what you have. If you don’t have lots of money for travel, think about what you do have. I decided to take advantage of credit card reward offers to earn miles and convinced Justin to do the same.

Just like you, Justin was skeptical. We were just getting good at improving our money skills and had no desire to accumulate credit card debt for travel. But I did my research and put together a plan and presented it to him. Not 100% sure how it’d all work out, we gave my plan a try and it worked.

We were able to earn miles using expenses we already had, book flights, and enjoy travel without accumulating debt.Now, years later we are still using miles to book inexpensive flights. This lowers our overall travel expenses because flight tickets are often the most pricey travel expense.

I’ve found that reducing flight costs (with miles and airline rewards), staying at budget accommodations, and eating out sparingly makes budget travel more easy to conquer.

HOW TO GET TO PARIS WITH MILES

Earn miles

Use miles to book two one-way tickets to Paris (CDG) for $5.60/pp

Add child under two years of age as a FREE lap child to the itinerary.

1. EARN MILES

There are two ways to earn miles.

Earn miles without credit cards

It’s possible to earn miles without credit cards. The process takes a much longer time.

Earn miles with credit cards.

Our preferred way of earning miles is with introductory credit card rewards. The ones that offer 50K+ miles in exchange for spending X amount in three months.

The miles used to book the one-way tickets to Paris were earnedwith the Delta SkyMiles Credit Card Rewards.

Disclaimer: Justin and I know from personal experience the pitfalls of accumulating debt and we’d never want to see you go into debt for a trip. That isn’t what we are advocating. We use credit cards without accumulating debt by having an organized process that involves planning, using spreadsheets to track spending, and paying off each debt often within the same week of purchases. We don’t use money we don’t have. We’ll share more in the upcoming course.

2. USE THE EARNED MILES TO BOOK TRAVEL

Once we earned the miles it was time to put them to good use. Thankfully, Delta makes searching and booking flights with miles extremely easy.

The miles cover the cost of tickets but not the fees. The fees for each adult ticket was $5.60. There are no hidden fees or surprises.

3. ADD FREE LAP CHILD

Our last step was adding our child to the travel plans.

The process of adding a lap child was painless. We made a call to the airline and at no additional cost, our daughter was made a traveler on my ticket.

That’s it. That’s how all three of us got to Paris for less than $12 USD. Of course, we still had to purchase our return flights but we used a budget airline (Norwegian) and getting home was economical.

When you don’t have all the resources, try to become resourceful. It works for life and in travel.

What has been your experience traveling with miles or rewards?

**I’m excited to share that Justin and I are working on a course to teach you every detail of the process we use to travel with miles WITHOUT accumulating debt. Stay tuned.

The information provided is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Readers accept all responsibility for any liability, loss or risk, personal or otherwise, incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, from any information or advice contained here.

JUSTIN + TIFFANY

Hi there! We are Justin and Tiffany Green, food enthusiasts, movie loving, travel obsessed parents living a simple life in North Carolina. Our goal is to live well and travel far as a family - and capture the moments in a meaningful way.